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Both female and male employees have come forward to report sexual assault and toxic workplace culture at UK’s and Ireland’s McDonald’s outlets. (Image: Shutterstock)
Hundreds of teenage girls and boys, women and men, have spoke to news agency BBC to share how they faced sexual abuse and a toxic work culture.
More than 100 former and current McDonald’s workers in the UK came forward to allege that they faced sexual harassment and bullying at the food chain, according to an investigation by the news outlet BBC.
The probe revealed that workers as young as 17 faced harassment, with some claiming they were routinely groped and harrassed. After the news surfaced more allegations have been reported increasing the pressure on the mega food chain.
McDonald’s assured that all allegations will be investigated and highlighted that it has “stringent” standards. “There are clearly instances where we have fallen short and for that we deeply apologise,” Alistair Macrow, chief executive of McDonald’s UK and Ireland said in a statement to the BBC.
The report is likely to hurt McDonald’s because the mega food chain signed a legally-binding agreement with the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) few months ago where it promised to improve workplace culture after another set of sexual harassment allegations surfaced.
The EHRC is an equalities watchdog.
A report by the Financial Times citing the Bakers, Food and Allied Workers Union (BFAWU) said over 1,000 reports of women facing alleged harassment at the hands of managers and supervisors were reported. Accusations of a toxic work culture also tarnished the image of McDonald’s back home in the US.
The BBC report that came earlier this week led many others to come forward and share allegations of similar experiences. “At one point a manager groped me, and hit me on the bottom, and then laughed,” they were quoted as saying by the BBC.
The incident is a new allegation that surfaced after the initial report was published.
The allegations reported in the first report by the news outlet were:
A female teenage employee in Cheshire was called a racial slur and then asked if he could show her his penis and said he wanted to make a “black and white” baby with her. The alleged employee is 20 years older than her.
A 16-year-old male worker was told to perform sexual acts in exchange for vapes by a manager at an outlet in Hampshire.
Another male worker was forced by a senior female manager to put his hand down her trousers and smack her buttocks.
“It’s the expectation that if you work at McDonald’s, you will be harassed,” Emily, a 20-year-old worker, who quit her role at a Brighton branch, told the news outlet.
“There is a saying at McDonald’s, “tits on tills” – boys in the kitchen, girls on the counter. The idea is to put attractive people at the front,” another worker, previously involved with the Norwich branch of the UK said.
An Indian worker also came forward and said that her managers spoke in gibberish to intimate her and called her Pakistani colleague a “terrorist”.
Another 16-year-old girl who worked at McDonald’s said she worked there in a constant state of fear. She said she was groped almost on every shift.
“They’d grope stomach, waists, and bums. Every shift I worked, there would be at least a comment being made, or I’d be brushed, a hand brushed across me, or it would be a more severe thing, like having my bum grabbed, hips grabbed,” the teenager told the BBC.
McDonald’s told the Financial Times that it has set up a specialist unit to handle complaints by employees about sexual harassment, assault and bullying.
“Anyone involved should come forward and talk to the company’s complaints process about that, and that’s the right way to deal with this problem,” Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said.
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